SILCHAR, Oct 19 - A teacher who led a team of five students of Saraswati Vidyaniketan, a unit of the Vidya Bharati institutions at Dolu here, to Chennai for an international exhibition, went missing under mysterious circumstances on their return journey. As the five students were being taken to a safer place at Visakhapatnam, the science teacher identified as Sujoy Bhattacharjee (42) was found inside the Guwahati Express at the same place on Wednesday night, 11 hours after the incident.
�We faced a lot of anxiety as we lost contact with Bhattacharjee at 1.30 pm on Wednesday. All the six from Silchar had their tickets on the waiting list. When I tried to contact the students Monideepa Deb, Krishanu Bhuiyan, Bishal Karmakar, Panna Dhobi and Amarjit Singh, all in the age group of 14-15 years, they said Bhattacharjee had gone to meet the ticket collector to arrange for the tickets, but he did not return. I contacted Brajesh Bagri, a local businessman of Visakhapatnam, who was kind enough to rush to the station and receive the students while we were clueless about Bhattacharjee as his phone was found to be switched off. After the children were taken out of the train, Bhattacharjee called one of our school staff,� said Asit Dutta, vice president of the Vidya Bharati institutions, South Assam zone.
Dutta further revealed an FIR was lodged and tweets were sent to Union Railway Minister Piyush Goel. Quick replies came from the Ministry, assuring prompt action.
Significantly, even as the students were being taken to a hotel in Visakhapatnam, they were not in touch with Bhattacharjee. Dutta said that when Bhattacharjee spoke to them, his voice was quivering. �We suspect that Bhattacharjee might have been victim of some foul play. We want all the students and the teacher in-charge to reach home safely and for this we are taking all measures,� Dutta maintained.